Delirium Tremens: What It Is, Causes, Symptoms & Treatment

Two commonly used tools to assess withdrawal symptoms are the Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment for Alcohol Scale, Revised, and the Short Alcohol Withdrawal Scale. Patients with mild to moderate withdrawal symptoms without additional risk factors for developing severe or complicated withdrawal should be treated as outpatients when possible. Ambulatory withdrawal treatment should include supportive care and pharmacotherapy as appropriate. Benzodiazepines are first-line therapy for moderate to severe symptoms, with carbamazepine and gabapentin as potential adjunctive or alternative therapies. Physicians should monitor outpatients with alcohol withdrawal syndrome daily for up to five days after their last drink to verify symptom improvement and to evaluate the need for additional treatment.

What are the symptoms?

People with alcohol use disorder should be monitored by a medical professional when withdrawing from alcohol. Moderate to heavy drinkers can also benefit from medical supervision in the acute withdrawal stage. There is no exact timeline for alcohol withdrawal, and individual factors, such as the level of dependence on alcohol, will influence it. Depressants like alcohol can cause your muscles to relax, but withdrawal can cause tremors, muscle tightness, and seizures.

Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome

Inpatient EEG should be recorded after a first seizure, if status epilepticus is suspected, or if a new seizure pattern emerges (27). Yet the value of EEG in the setting of alcohol withdrawal seizures is limited and findings such as epileptiform activity should prompt the evaluation of an underlying epilepsy (23). In addition, where repeated withdrawal seizures are a pattern, EEG is alcohol withdrawal seizure considered necessary only if an alternative etiology is suspected. The incidence of EEG abnormalities (focal slowing or epileptiform activity) is lower among patients with alcohol withdrawal seizures than in those with seizures of other etiologies.

What Happens After Alcohol Detox?

A summary of relevant markers in the emergency setting is given in Table 3. The detection of ethanol itself in different specimens is still a common diagnostic tool to prove alcohol consumption. Although ethanol is rapidly eliminated from the circulation, the time for detection by breath analysis is dependent on the amount of intake as ethanol depletes according to a linear reduction at about 0,15‰/1 h. There is a large degree of variability in alcohol metabolism as a result of both genetic and environmental factors.

Currently, health experts do not know if any factors influence the timeline of alcohol withdrawal syndrome aside from how much alcohol an individual typically consumes. More studies are necessary to better understand this condition and how certain factors may affect the timeline and severity of symptoms. An estimated 50 percent of people who have an alcohol addiction will experience withdrawal symptoms if they abruptly stop drinking.